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It may be the dog days of August—a sweltering, 90-degree weekend in the Northwest?— but there was still a trickle of action last week in biotech, biofuels, and software. We’ll see if the deals start to pick up this week, with the rain and cooler temperatures.

—Accelerator, the Seattle-based biotech incubator, has formed a new startup called Mirina. The exact investment amount has not been announced, but it’s in the range of $1.6 million to $5 million. Mirina will develop drugs to block microRNAs, molecules that could control gene networks. Possible targets include cancer, infectious diseases, and metabolic disorders.

—AXI, a Seattle-area biofuels startup, announced its launch with seed funding from Allied Minds, a Massachusetts-based investment firm focused on early-stage technologies from academic labs. AXI was spawned from research on oil-producing algae in the lab of University of Washington biologist Rose Ann Cattolico.

—Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN) has moved forward with a couple of small clinical trials of Provenge, an immunotherapy treatment for prostate cancer. The Seattle biotech company has begun enrolling patients in its NeoACT trial, which will involve 40 patients at University of California, San Francisco, with localized prostate cancer. Another clinical trial of Provenge, called ProACT, is expected to begin later this month; the multi-center trial involves 120 patients with metastatic prostate cancer.

Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's Deputy Editor, National IT Editor, and Editor of Xconomy Boston. E-mail him at gthuang [at] xconomy.com. Follow @gthuang